Minnedosa veterans receive French Legion of Honour medals

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This article was published 14/03/2017 (3308 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MINNEDOSA — Duane LaCoste has long known two of Minnedosa’s esteemed Second World War veterans, recognized yesterday with France’s highest honour for helping liberate their country.

But after LaCoste studied the duo’s time in the military in order to nominate them for the award, the president of Royal Canadian Legion Branch No. 138 knows the humble men by a greater title.

“They are true gentlemen, and now that I have done this research, I know that they are true heroes as well.”

LaCoste’s sentiment was expressed to a gallery of more than 150 family, friends and community members who packed the Minnedosa Legion Monday afternoon to watch Alexander Abel and Fred Oberg officially receive their French Legion of Honour medals.

Afterwards, a steady stream of visitors walked up to shake the men’s hands, while cameras flashed.

In 2013, the French government announced it would bestow the French Legion of Honour medal, featuring a five-armed cross and green wreath, to living veterans in recognition of their efforts.

These two Minnedosa heroes, wounded in service, are modest about their accomplishments, LaCoste explained.

He spoke of visiting Abel — a man he got to know well through curling — recently to express his congratulations.

LaCoste said if he knew a hero was in his midst, he would have bowed to him and carried his broom.

Abel shook LaCoste’s hand and said, “Duane, I’m just Alex, and you don’t have to bow down to me,” LaCoste remembered. “I might have let you carry my broom, but I don’t think I would trust you with my whiskey.”

The two men, LaCoste later said, have brought honour “not only to themselves, but to their country and our small community as well.”

Oberg is 100 years old and Abel is 93. The veterans, who are members of the Legion, are the last living soldiers from the Minnedosa area to serve in France.

Just 18 when he enlisted, Abel stood on Juno Beach two years later on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

The next month, he and another Canadian were told to take two prisoners to headquarters. They knew snipers were behind their lines and might show their position by firing shots. They did, firing at the Canadians, but the two of them, and their prisoners, escaped without injury.

Later, shrapnel wounded Abel when a bomb landed. While bound for England to seek treatment, his ship was torpedoed.

Abel scurried to the top of the boat, put on his lifejacket and came across a badly wounded Welsh soldier, struggling to put on his lifejacket.

Abel yanked off his shoelaces and belt to tie the lifejacket around the Welshman. They both jumped off the boat. Abel was rescued by a United States ship, and never learned the fate of the man he helped.

He later turned down a “cushy” job training troops in England to rejoin his unit.

After the ceremony, Abel said he doesn’t see well anymore, but the picture in front of him of seeing every seat occupied was clear.

“It’s nice that people remember.”

Daughter Margaret Wareham said her father doesn’t talk often about the war, “but we all feel it.”

“I’d say it’s pride, we all have a lot of pride for grandpa,” said granddaughter Colleen Woychyshyn.

Oberg landed on the West Coast of France in 1944 and also served in Belgium, Holland and Germany while in the military.

A member of the Corps of Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, he provided maintenance support and saw his work pay dividends when he landed in France, driving a truck off the landing craft into water.

The water came up to Oberg’s armpits. The soldier was thankful, LaCoste shared, that the truck was water-proofed well.

Eventually hurt by shrapnel, he was treated and continued on through Europe.

“It means a great deal,” Oberg said of the recognition and the community support. “It means they’re really interested in what’s gone on and what has gone on.”

Sandy Borley, his daughter, proudly stood beside Oberg as Bruno Burnichon, honorary consul of France, affixed the medal on his father’s lapel.

She said her dad thinks often of the men who never made it home.

“Especially when you get to an occasion like this, you see the emotion that is just under the surface,” Borley said. “It’s very real to them that it wasn’t that long ago.”

One other man would have been recognized at the ceremony but passed away last summer.

Clayton Searle saw action in France when his regiment was stationed there in 1944. He was acknowledged at numerous points during the ceremony, but the medal is not granted posthumously.

Later that day, Second World War veteran Robert Henderson received the French Legion of Honour medal at a ceremony in Shoal Lake.

» ifroese@brandonsun.com, with files from Ian Hitchen

» Twitter: @ianfroese